He skipped his son’s wedding.

As the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth reports:

“It was not a hard decision for me to decide then that I had to be in Washington, if that was the time the vote was coming up. But it was still hard, if you know what I mean,” King said.

The reaction in the room?

“No one in this family asked me to reconsider. They all said, ‘We know that you will do what you have to do,’” King said. “So I call it full-family support and full understanding. As I said, the best thing that I could give them would be to preserve the freedom that I was born into and be able to pass that along to any children that they will be blessed with.”

U.S. Rep. Steve King

But all that could vanish with a single sentence: “I’m Congressman Steve King and I want to be Iowa’s next governor.”

The Democratic salivating began in February when King, a Republican from Kiron, refused to rule out a gubernatorial run on Iowa Public Television. It’s escalated to full-frontal lip smacking with news that King, whose congressional district covers western Iowa, plans to headline an anti-abortion event in eastern Iowa next week.

Residents of eastern Iowa, who have never had an opportunity to cast a ballot based on their displeasure of King’s extreme social conservative viewpoints, are especially relishing the idea of being able to vote against “the state’s cancer,” as King has been referred to on more than one occasion.

“It’s never enough to just limit cancer,” explained Allan Hale, a resident of Ely. “You have to eradicate it. You have to destroy it. If you don’t, it will fester and spread. Even if I’ve never had a chance to vote against him, his policies and his stupidity impact me.”

Those that believe such statements to be too inflammatory for proper political discourse need look no further than King’s own statements.

“What kind of a nation are we if we can’t have open dialog?” King asked members of the Sioux City Rotary Club last year while defending his own controversial rhetoric.

Mike Carberry, a Johnson County Democrat, likens the Democratic want of a persona like King on the 2010 gubernatorial ballot with the same push Republican pundits gave to then-New York Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid.

“They saw her candidacy as an opportunity to motivate their base because of all the negative bias against her,” Carberry said. “This is the same principle.

“Steve King never misses an opportunity to embarrass himself or Iowa. While our state used to be known as the place of corn and hogs, now we are nationally associated with ignorance and intolerance because of King. The bottom line is that Iowans will line up to vote against him.”

Even within the predominantly conservative counties that make up Iowa’s 5th Congressional District, some residents have not only voted against King, but created a Web site declaring that King does not represent Iowa values. The group points to King’s continued quest to raise his congressional pay, his inability to pass a major federal bill, and even his possible quest at a gubernatorial run as reasons King should be known as an ineffective lawmaker and an embarrassment to the entire state.

When King described military service members who married foreign spouses as drunks on binge — in addition to saying that foreign widows of fallen U.S. soldiers exploit the U.S. immigration system — the former president of the Reserve Officers Association of Iowa said that King “wraps himself in the flag at every opportunity, and yet has chosen to malign the loved ones of deceased service members.”

Such statements, which King himself has described as calculated, have drawn to his side a negative national following as well. When he declared in March 2005 that “Congress created all of the courts” and that “whatever Congress gives, they can take away,” he came under intense scrutiny.

Nearly every feminist in the world tied King to a verbal whipping post in June 2006 when he said that deceased terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi probably wouldn’t have “72 virgins in the hell he’s at,” but, “if there are, they probably all look like Helen Thomas,” referring to the legendary White House correspondent of more than five decades.

From describing the events at Abu Ghraib as “hazing,” to describing war-torn Iraq as safer than Washington, D.C., to equating immigrant people with livestock, to proclaiming that terrorists and their sympathizers would be “dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11,” 2001 if Barack Obama was elected president, King has touched nearly every public interest group with a sharp tongue.

Although the eastern Iowa event featuring King is an anti-abortion “educational” meeting hosted by Linn Area Pro Life United at the Crowne Plaza in Cedar Rapids on April 6, King even has his dissenters within that community.

“He takes every opportunity he can to put down the poor and the oppressed and expresses only what we consider contempt for the people whom Jesus said ‘are the least of these,’” Frank Cordaro, a former Catholic priest and human rights activist, said in February when King spoke at the statehouse on behalf of a Catholic-backed gathering of anti-abortion activists. “It humiliates Catholics who work among and struggle for the poor and disenfranchised in this state.”

When looking at King’s motivations for wanting to headline an event on the opposite side of the state from his congressional district, there is no denying the possible longer term impact of reapportionment and redistricting, which will almost certainly include the loss of one of Iowa’s federal representatives in 2012. While it is much more likely that Democrats Bruce Braley, who represents the 1st District, and Dave Loebsack, who represents the 2nd, will be placed in the same congressional district, there remains a possibility, depending on how the new four districts are drawn, that King and fellow Republican Tom Latham could reside in a newly drawn district.

It would be close to impossible, however, to draw a district that would include King’s home in Kiron with Cedar Rapids, the site of King’s upcoming appearance. Given that, there is no reason to place King’s visit in connection with redistricting concerns.

“The chances of seeing a district slice across the center of the state like that are extremely slim,” said David Redlawsk, a political science professor at the University of Iowa. “The code charges that districts should be compact, and although the exact meaning of ‘compact’ has been debated, I think that a district spanning from one side of the state to the other would clearly not meet that goal.”

Any political capital King might garner from his upcoming eastern Iowa visit could only be spent on a statewide race — which can only be described as music to the ears of Iowa Democrats.

The Senate vote fell mostly along party lines.  Three Republicans — Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — sided with the majority Democrats to approve the estimated $838 billion package.  The corresponding bill in the U.S. House passed with no Republican votes and fewer bipartisan compromises.

The next step in the legislative process is a conference committee, which will merge the House and Senate versions of the stimulus package into a mutually agreeable bill.

Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks visited with area veterans after delivering the keynote address at the Metro Area Veterans Council service on Tuesday.

There was nothing usual about the Metro Area Veterans Council inviting Ottumwa ophthalmologist Dr. Mariannette Miller-Meeks to keynote their annual Veterans Day service in Cedar Rapids. Miller-Meeks, a Republican who recently lost her bid to become Iowa’s first female member of Congress, is a veteran, as is her husband. But as she spoke of honor, commitment and the quest of veterans to remain relevant, the political undertones were unmistakable.

“Your actions have consequences, and your words have meaning,” Miller-Meeks said during her keynote address. “For those of you in this room who are worried that Veterans Day and the honor and commitment and sacrifice that you’ve made is losing its popularity and you will be forgotten, I’m imploring you to become relevant again.”

Miller-Meeks went on to tell veterans and their spouses that they can play a significant role in welcoming home the men and women who are now returning from war and by serving as a support system for the families who await their soldier’s return.

“So, for those of you who think you may become irrelevant, I am telling you that your time for leadership has not passed,” she said. “Your time for leadership is now. It is not the person who has the rank that is the leader. It is the person who emerges from whatever circumstance to bring the solution, to forward the issue, to speak for those who cannot speak. Your time for leadership is now.”

The call for a second wave of service ends with Miller-Meeks stating, “It is not always the victor who is well-remembered in history; sometimes it is those who have been vanquished.”

Following the event, many in the audience came up to speak with Miller-Meeks and show their support for her congressional run and her continued service in Iowa’s 2nd District. She has not publicly indicated if she will again venture into politics, but, if she takes her own advice, it’s quite certain that she will remain relevant.

An audio file featuring a musical selection from the service performed by the New Horizons Band and narrated by Cary J. Hahn, a journalist and Navy veteran, is available.

Iowa’s role is not directly addressed under the Republican rules adopted Monday, since the caucuses are a non-binding straw poll.

Like the Democrats, Republicans appointed a commission to study calendar reform. This is the first time Republicans have deferred final calendar decisions to a post-convention body. The big difference is that the GOP has required its commission to keep New Hampshire and South Carolina first in the primary calendar. The Democrats have given their commission a clean slate.

Another difference from the Democrats: The Republicans made their rules stick, enforcing the 50 percent delegate penalty that it imposed on Michigan and Florida for jumping ahead in the schedule. Democrats initially punished those states by taking away all their delegates, but first gave back half, then all, the delegates.

Republicans also punished New Hampshire and South Carolina for jumping ahead. Democrats in those states changed their dates, too, but only in order to keep their place in line.

The GOP commission “pushes back the calendar and it slows it down — and that’s a big gift for us,” Tom Rath, a New Hampshire delegate and member of the convention’s Credentials Committee, told the Associated Press.

Republicans had hoped to push the process back even more and put New Hampshire and South Carolina in late February 2012 with other states starting in March. But the McCain campaign chose not to fight that fight, and it’s now expected that the early states, including Iowa, will vote in January 2012.

That might have a ripple effect into the Iowa Democratic caucuses, as historically the Iowa parties have prioritized keeping the caucuses on the same night. In late 2007, Iowa Democrats seemed to be leaning toward a Jan. 5 caucus until the Republicans trumped them with a Jan. 3 date. The Democrats then quickly followed suit.

Michael Barone reports that the bipartisan effort is now happening on the national level, with Republican National Chairman Mike Duncan and Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean talking on the issue.

The calendar process will likely be driven by the party that loses the presidential election, since it’s likely that the incumbent president will face a smooth, low turnout renomination.

King recently turned down a debate opportunity in Sioux City, the largest municipality in his sprawling district, because he was upset over a story in the Sioux City Journal written by highly respected veteran journalist Bret Hayworth — who has the reputation as a fair, thorough reporter, not a partisan Molitov cocktail-heaver. The story quoted Monona County Democratic Party chairman Ken Mertes concern over what he believes to be King’s ” consistently racist remarks.” The quote was deep into a comprehensive piece examining King’s effectiveness.

King has previously taken issue with The Des Moines Register, going so far to appeal to potential donors with a pitch that the newspaper has victimized him. In 2006, King said there was a left-wing conspiracy against him in one of the more conservative and reliably Republican congressional districts.

In this latest interview, King said some journalists have had enough chances with him — although he didn’t name anyone in specific.

Here is the Spencer Daily Reporter:

King recently has felt the impact of some media criticism, and reportedly declined to participate in a debate sponsored by the Sioux City Journal due to what he felt was unfair coverage.

“I don’t want to say whether I’ve been treated fairly or not,” King told the Pilot-Tribune Monday. “I will say that the press is getting analytically very lazy. They think they can print anything, whether it is barely a rumor-let alone fact.

“As far as I’m concerned they have the right to say whatever they will on the editorial page, because I believe in the Constitutional right to free speech, but when they start printing their own offensive opinions in the news pages as if they were fact, I do have a problem with that.”

King said that he would work with any form of media that treats him decently, but that he would no longer go out of his way for those that do not.

“If you treat someone well and they turn around and slap you, you turn the other cheek and try again. But if they just slap you again for it, well, as far as I’m concerned, I’m out of cheeks.”

The chambers of the Iowa Senate.

Democrats already have a 30-to-20 advantage, and in five battleground districts identified earlier this year by The Iowa Independent, Democratic candidates have an overwhelming advantage in cash on hand, with $224,732 compared to $20,071 for the Republicans. Two of those five seats are currently held by retiring Republicans, meaning the Democrats are in good position to expand their majority in the Senate.

Here is a look at fund-raising totals for the five battleground districts, according to the most recent filings with the Iowa Ethics and Campaign Disclosure Board.

District 16

Incumbent Tom Hancock, D-Epworth, narrowly defeated Republican Julie Hosch in 2004, causing some to believe he was ripe for an upset this year. He faces off with Dave McLaughlin, a car dealer from Cascade. Hancock has $16,903 cash on hand compared with $3,125 for McLaughlin.

District 18

The retirement of incumbent Mary Lundby, R-Marion, caused Democrats to immediately put this district on its list for a possible pickup. District demographics lean Republican, but Democratic candidate Rep. Swati Dandekar has a huge cash advantage over her opponent, William Childers, a banker from Marion. Dandekar has $92,941 cash on hand to Childers’ $4,456.

District 22

This is another district where an incumbent Republican is retiring and opening the door to a Democratic pickup. Larry McKibben, R-Marshalltown, is stepping down after three terms. Republican Jarret Heil, a former staffer for U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley and U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, will face off with Democrat Steve Sodders, a Marshall County deputy sheriff from State Center. Sodders has $48,391 cash on hand. Heil has only $8,116.

District 38

Incumbent Tom Rielly, D-Oskaloosa, will face off with Republican Michael Hadley, a fire chief from Richland. Long considered a GOP district, Rielly won in 2004 with the help of a large majority of votes out of Grinnell. He has $54,129 cash on hand compared to $3,536 for Hadley.

District 42

Incumbent Frank Wood, D-Davenport, defeated Republican Brian Sievers by only 480 votes in 2004. This year he will face off with Shawn Hamerlinck, R-Davenport. Wood has a sizable cash advantage, with $12,368 compared to $838 for Hamerlinck.

For all of his bluster and posturing, what has U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, actually accomplished?

The Sioux City Journal researches this question in some detail.

In terms of legislation, King has been successful with one bill he’s sponsored: getting Christmas recognized as being, well, important to Christians.

Of the 44 bills King has sponsored according to www.GovTrack.us, three have made it out of committee and only one has been acted. The piece of legislation? House Resolution 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas the Christian faith.

But don’t despair — King says he’s had some success blocking what he believes to be bad legislation or funding choices.

King said the extended 2007 funding debate for reauthorization of the federal State Children’s Health Insurance Program was a key moment. The measure was initially written for an increase of $35 billion, but was scaled back before being signed by President Bush in December.

King took to the House floor last fall with a sign that said the SCHIP acronym should instead stand for “Socialized Clinton-style Hillarycare for Illegals and their Parents.”

“I do believe if you took me out of the equation, there would have been a different (funding) result,” King said.

And in the priority debate raging between U.S. Highway 20 and U.S. Highway 30 — with 30 having the most traffic and the clear lead in economic development in its corridor — King has proven to be an advocate for 20 at the expense of 30.

The cost for expanding U.S. 20 from two to four lanes over 90 miles from Moorland to Moville is estimated to cost $520 million. King has specified his $35 million is for portions west of U.S. Highway 71 in Woodbury, Ida and Sac counties.

“It’s a given that Highway 20 will be completed all the way to Sioux City,” King said. “I believe I have given every effort to keep my word on those two (infrastructure) things. Both of those things will get done.”

King said as he’s served in Congress, he’s broadened the infrastructure funding list to Interstate 29 interchanges in Council Bluffs and Sioux City, along with the Outer Drive expansion in Sioux City.

Nowhere in the The Journal story does King mention U.S. 30 — something those who live along that federal route may want to consider when evaluating the congressman.